


Women of Revolution: The Enemy

by Corycides



Series: Women of Revolution [5]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-19 05:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite the fact that women are recruited into the militia, we never seem to see any of them. Assuming that General Monroe isn’t keeping them in a pen outside, what are they doing?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Women of Revolution: The Enemy

The young man knelt on the floor with his hands tied behind his back and blood on his tanned face. He was gagged, what looked like half a dirty sleeve stuck in his mouth, but his dark eyes were snapping with rage and contempt.

Governor Lucy Yates sipped a glass of water and studied the latest saboteur Monroe had sent after her boats with dispassionate eyes. Outwardly she looked as she always did, a composed, elegant woman in her 50s with a mild face, a slightly weak chin and neatly bobbed light grey hair.

Inside she was furious. Monroe had over-stepped again and she couldn’t afford to retaliate with the symbolic (or literal, if she was lucky) kick in the nuts that he surely deserved. If her spies were to be trusted, and they usually were, he’d succeeded in turning the lights back on.

Briefly, but more than anyone else had done.

Alliance was about a decade past possible – and Monroe was a self-important narcissist anyhow, not good at working with others – but if he got his little boy’s club models working? Georgia would have to show belly along with everyone else, and hope someone else had offended him in the interim. 

Not because they were scared – although it probably would be terrible – but because how could they thwart the world getting even that much closer to fixed?

‘Ungag him,’ she said.

Victor rolled his eyes, but did as he was told. The minute the gag was removed, the boy hawked and spat onto the floor. The glob of phlegm and froth smeared the floor as he glared up at her.

‘Dried up old cow,’ he said. ‘When Monroe comes, he’ll wash this land with your blood.’

A perfectly manicured eyebrow twitched. The world might have gone to hell, but Lucy saw no reason for personal grooming to go the same way. As she watched the militia boy ranted on, eyes getting redder and veins bulgier with every inventive death he came up with.

It didn’t take her long to get tired of it, so she threw her glass of water in his face. He spluttered, spat and glared at her – momentarily silenced.

‘You are under a misapprehension,’ she told him, crouching down gracefully. He knees creaked under her fine cotton trousers, but hopefully only she heard that. Elegant hands laced together, a single ring glittering on her wedding finger. ‘I’m not scared of Sergeant Monroe.’

The boy’s face went puce with rage and he lunged at her, head down like a bull. Victor swore and lunged, but his fingers slipped off sweaty arms. Lucy dropped back, catching her weight on her hand, and lashed out with her leg.

Impact made the militia boy grunt and he went rolling over the floor. Victor muttered an apology and snapped his fingers for the men to get the prisoner while he offered Lucy a hand up.

She hated to admit it, but she was grateful for it. She was not as young as she used to be, and being stupid hurt more. The guards man-handled the prisoner back over and forced him back down to his knees.

‘Kill me,’ he dared her. ‘It won’t change anything.’

Lucy sighed and rubbed at a dirty mark on her sleeve. ‘I’m not going to kill you, you’re too useful for that. I’m going to listen while you tell me everything you know about Monroe’s plans to get the lights back on.

He smirked and looked her up and down. ‘You think you can make me talk? Strausser trained me.’

‘I don’t know who that is,’ Lucy said. 

It wasn’t true, she did. She knew all of Monroe’s inner circle, although the make-up changed weekly sometimes. Strausser was a slice-happy sadist who enjoyed killing enough that Lucy suspected he’d been doing it before the lights went off.

That didn’t mean she was impressed.

‘Whoever Strausser is, he’s an amateur,’ she said. The boy stared at her like she was mad. One thing Lucy couldn’t fault Monroe on was building mythology. 100 years and he’d be the new Caesar ‘And torture is ineffective in the hands of amateurs. So is re-education.’

She waved for the men to take him away. The part of him that held a grudge about the attempt to burn her fleet was smug as he kicked and swore. He wouldn’t be hurt. In Lucy’s experience torture was more work than it was worth. She’d use it if she had to, but it was a tool of last resort. 

Much more cost-efficient to just feed the kid a good meal and stick him out in the courtyard doing something useful. Like some inoculations, indoctrination of the type Monroe was so fond of required booster shots. Internal reinforcement was not enough to support such a complex and weighty mental structure.

Victor came back after a minute with a fresh glass of water, handing it to her mutely. He waited while she finished before asking, ‘Do you think it’s true? Has he electricity?’

The glass chinked off the table as Lucy set it down. ‘Not yet,’ she said, pointing skyward with one fingers. ‘You’d have heard the bombs drop if he did. He could be close though.’

‘And if he is?’

Lucy pursed her lips. ‘Either we hail him as the new leader of the world, or we steal it off him.’

‘It?’ Victor asked, earning a curious look. ‘Or them?’


End file.
